This latest gatecrash is a short autobiographical homage (read: shameless self-promotion) to Even Books’ very own new little Etsy store, where they pick books for you because they know what they’re doing.

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Even Books on Etsy

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So. Books. Books are good. But you know what we hate about books? Having to choose them. So much slinking around, sighing, looking at covers, reading reviews and, ugh, BORING! Wouldn’t it be easier if you could just work out what mood you were in, and someone would provide you with two books PERFECT for that mood. Hmm? Well? Wouldn’t it?

Well haha, guess what?! We have totally invented this phenomenon! Except you also have to click a few times to express your mood, but essentially, we are your psychic, book-providing machines! Or our Etsy store is anyway. Check it out!

You can also just buy the calico bag if you prefer to pick your own books (we won’t be offended, really, but you should totes work on your risk taking skills) or, buy a loved-themed zine, put together by us and written by a bunch of Sydney’s finest. They are only $4. IS THAT EVEN LEGAL?

OK, self promo over. Next time we’ll be back with more retarded reviews of weird books I guess. But remember that we are reading your minds right now.

This is a mini museum of artifacts from the ‘pages of history’. We created it for our Laneway Markets stall.  See Agatha Christie’s glasses there? Sherlock’s pipe? Dorian’s mummy dearest? Special in so many ways. Photo courtesy of Maja Baska.

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+ + til next time, even books + +

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Chucking out a book is like drowning out a small kitten. Easy! No, it’s really quite difficult, and tugs at your heartstrings like some kind of deranged surgeon who thinks your heart is a violin but has no sense of melody. Oh, THAT book! But my ex-flatmate’s boyfriend used it once to prop up the kitchen table! How we laughed! How we cried! How we ate a balanced meal!

Each book is riddled with memories, and splotched with the remnants of old soups and chocolate bars. But sometimes, when you’re feeling cold and efficient, you look at your bookshelf and think, Hey! Wait a minute! Where did you come from? I hope you aren’t the one that drank the last six pack and puked in my undies draw! Gatecrashers can be fun, can make the vibe electric … but sometimes you’ve got to turn the page on their party time. Here’s some we uncovered, and put to the test.

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What Makes a Teen-ager Say: Sometimes I Feel Like a Blob (1965) by Ethel Barrett

“I don’t know who or what I am or what I’m here for. I can’t seem to get identified.” Never fear, youngster. Your public identification is now complete. You are a HUMAN POO with DEMON EYES, writhing in a GOUACHEY GRADIENT NIGHTMARE. How easy was that? And you thought you were a garden variety BLOB. Author Ethel Barrett’s credentials include, “talking most of her life.” Well, she’s a woman ain’t she? That’s like asking whether the Little Lady can also hoover, dust her man’s pillows with daisies and construct a delightful dinner dish using nothing but cold meats and Jello. Howzabout stating the obvious! Or maybe I should leave it to the pro, Ethel. Anyway, back to you, Turd-ager. With chapters like, “I’m a nobody,” “But my handicaps are not physical,” “I look a fright,” and “I hate to be a poor sport,” it’s no wonder you feel like shit. You are going through an emotional intestine and will not be pooped out the other end until you have your own plasma TV, set of wheels, and can afford enough plastic surgery and distressed jeans to attract the opposite sex. Hang in there, kiddo. At least Ethel Barrett is too busy talking about you to listen to you.

CHUCK OR KEEP? Chuck but keep the cover in case you ever lose your proof of age ID.

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The World Traveller’s Guide to Adult Movies (1982) from the editors of Consumer Guide.

It’s so nice, and adult, to have, “an authoritative assessment” of Debbie Does Dallas and Hot and Saucy Pizza Girls on hand when travelling this great, blue-ball world of ours. Promising to take the mystery out of choosing adult video cassettes (leave mystery where it belongs: to venereal diseases and ‘guess who the Baby Daddy is’ games), it also offers various chin-strokes like, “Some experts are predicting a second sexual revolution, with adult cinema knocking own the last doors of hypocrisy and repression… The stag film dies hard, but the new age looms ahead.” Oh 1982, how rosy were your glasses! This is such a delightful book it deserves to be your pub buddy, not dust collector. And if you were wondering: Debbie Does Dallas = 1 star, script poor, production fair. Hot and Saucy Pizza Girls = 1 star, acting poor, directing poor.

CHUCK OR KEEP? Keep, but in your backpack.

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Corona 1800-2000: Service and Repair Manual (1974-76) produced by Gregory’s Publishing Co.

It’s quite strange to find a book on your shelf for a car you’ve never even owned from a time your parents hadn’t even started doing the naughty business yet. But with punchy, sexy-sounding contents like, REAR AXLE, BODY, LUBRICATION AND MAINTENANCE, CLUTCH and COOLING SYSTEM, it’s hard to kick this puppy to the curb. Also, did you know that there are parts in cars called BLEED SCREWS? And PUSH RODS? And LOCK NUTS? This manual is ruder than the Adult Movies one.

CHUCK OR KEEP? Keep, but move to the coffee table where your Black + White magazine used to be.
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Cycling Around Sydney with Hang Ten (1991)produced by the Bicycle Institute of NSW

Hailing from 1991 – and can’t you tell! Those socks! That jaunty tip o the neon visor! That scenic backdrop of sludge and scrappy sticks! The way the couple can’t even look at each other, still embarrassed from the night before when they got the dance moves to ‘Charly’ by The Prodigy wrong at the warehouse rave! Oh fatal misstep! But – this is a still quite useful how-to of hitting tha roads, Sydney-stylee. And could also be equally used to navigate the triptical nightlife; if only He and She Hang Ten had had this guide yesterday, a lot of heartache would’ve been saved. For instance, it advises, “Nothing deadens your muscles and your concentration like dehydration, so keep the water flowing.” Word, Anna Wood. “Be predictable.” I’m looking at you, nappy wearer. “Don’t weave in and out of parked cars,” – admittedly on LSD it’s hard to tell the difference between a carpark and a giant loom of which you are the sparkly thread. Basically, whether bikerider or gabbahead, there’s something to be gained here.

CHUCK OR KEEP? Shelve it (HAR HAR!!!).

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+ + til next time, even books + +

There’s one for the lovers, the mothers, the child-like, the chunky, the derisive and the despised… Two more sleeps!

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For: Someone You Want To Make Sexy Times With
The Hawkline Monster by Richard Brautigan

So things are going well. You had some drunken frottage, numbers were exchanged and you’ve been texting with gay abandon. You’re totes going to meet up for some face (sucking) time, and even though you barely know this dreamboat, the present time of year demands gift giving. Allow me to slip this copy of Brautigan into the pocket of your freakum dress. Hand it over with a casual ‘..Brautigan, such a trip’ and believe me, by the time you’re back from Peats Ridge/Falls/the shops your object of affection will have transformed into a psychedelic love god, only funnier and less likely to give you syphilis. – AF
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So you all know McCarthy from that book that’s now a movie that will wrench your heart around in your chest and make you feel anxious and scared and impressed and almost-daring-to-hope all at once, right? Well, he’s also pretty good at cowboys. The Border Trilogy contains three novels – All The Pretty Horses, The Crossing, and Cities of The Plain – and while you might start out thinking ‘cowboys, so rad! Who knew?’, by the end you’ll be clutching your safety blanket and yelling ’say it isn’t so!’. I’m only halfway through the second novel and already I’ve been so distraught by the (spoiler alert) death of a she-wolf that I had to go for a walk to calm down. Give it to your brother or your tough old uncle and watch them crumble. – AF
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+ + til next time, even books + +

We asked some of our favourites, Angela and Alice, to explain it in their own words to each other. Maybe they did, who knows, but all we really took from the whole thing is that they are insane and should never talk to each other again. But they can go ahead and make as much art as they want, because it’s raw and pure and untainted by societal discourse and cultural boundaries and all of that. All of what? What?

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Alice: Hi Lala, are you feeling excited about this Sat?

Angela: Umm, yes, very badly. Alice, dearest, pass me the butter. And while you do so, please respond to this query: what are you most looking forward to?

Alice: [passes the salt] Hmm, truth be told I think I’m mostly looking forward to getting drunk. It’s been quite a week you see. I’m also very much looking forward to seeing people muss themselves up in the painting corner though. You?

Angela: [Suffers mild heart attack due to lifelong obsession with fat] [Speaks from Heaven] Well, now that I am incorporeal I probably won’t be able to enjoy much of the crazy juice. It will be lovely to swing through strangers’ legs while the Jingle Jangle DJs play, however. It’s so nice of them to do two whole sets, one to warm us up, one to cool us  down. Dontcha think?

Alice: Oh yes, those jingly janglers are jolly nice chaps. No Art seem like good sorts also. What time are they playing again? (Also, what does God look like?).

Angela: God looks like a tub of lard with a drizzle of whipped cream. As for No Art, I’d say they’ll be served up around dessert time – or 9.30pm for those with sour tooths. While we’re on the palate, do you think Robert Hughes will be bitter that we’re cut+pasting his art criticism?

Alice: Not if he’s any type of real man. What’s a little “adaptation” between friends? He might object to the fact that I just called him a friend though… Speaking of friends, you could probably have chosen a better time to die, you know. Now I’m going to have to hand out all the free beer and instruct our fearsome life model by myself! Don’t you know the meaning of ‘team’?

Angela: Sure I do. I saw Team America! It means we have weird puppet sex then spew on each other, right? At least we’ll have some lurid green Even Books t-shirts to mop up the mess however. And if you’d consulted the Tarot reader LAST week, you’d have known my fatality was totally on the cards. Do Tarot readers have to tell you that stuff? Like, morally?

Alice: Tarot readers don’t have morals! They’re all stealing gypsies. Plus, I don’t even believe in it – I just want to play dress ups and take polaroids of myself in a dark booth. Um…what else… Do you watch people shower now that you’re all ghosty and invisible?

Angela: I am the water in all your showers. Oh yes. I am also the fun times in your Saturday night and the spanking hand on your bottom if you’re late. What’s late? One past seven. Bring your paint tins!

Alice: HAHAH I just read that as ‘pain tins’. Tins of pain all round! I’M BRINGING THE PAIN! Sorry, bit excited. Over and out.

+ + til next time, even books + +

And coming soon, the Throw Shapes Facebook quiz: Which local, self-starting, young and independent band/arts collective/grassroots initiative/warehouse studio/guerrilla knitting group do YOU belong to?

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You know those internet memes which you rigidly resist, your eyeballs bleeding blood for months on end, as more and more ‘SO-AND-SO has invited you do SO-AND-SO crappy Facebook quiz’ emails pile up in your inbox, like orphans of misdirected love and energy. You know those? And then, after the hoopla has passed, the bells-and-whistle parade has left town, and there’s just an empty plot of dead grass … only then do you creep over, harooing “Booooo Radley!”

Like, LOL cats. An animal wanting a cheeseburger and speaking (hmm, snuffling?) pidgin English? Delightful! The funny glaring hamster? A Cate Blanchett in the making! I even took a Facebook quiz recently – only to spew my own guts over the screen when I discover that, of all the fangtastic True Blood characters, I am SAM MERLOTTE! He’s an animal. I hate animals!

And the latest one to pass me by, like ultra-slow growing nails on dead people, is the ‘BBC Books I have Read and Thus am Super-Totes Smarter Thank You Suck My Cock’ one. It looks a little like this:

The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books here.
Instructions:

1) Look at the list and put an ‘x’ after those you have read.
2) Add a ‘+’ to the ones you LOVE.
3) Star (*) those you plan on reading.

1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch – George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis
34 Emma – Jane Austen
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne
41 Animal Farm – George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany – John Irving
45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding
50 Atonement – Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel
52 Dune – Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night – Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
72 Dracula – Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses – James Joyce
76 The Inferno – Dante
77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal – Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession – AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94 Watership Down – Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

And you know what? I did it. I couldn’t help it! My little (ok, they’re big) hands were clicking on the X like the spot put $ straight into my superannuation bank, like my life depended upon it, like it would truly tell me once and for all what all my high-school teachers and subsequent uni lecturers couldn’t … THAT I AM THE BIGGEST GENIUS IN THE WORLD! In reality, I barely even scored a Distinction (but really, what the hell is The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins anyway? Clearly not a fair battle.) But, I am obvs way better than that lowly Englishman, too busy wiping their nose and wanking over Jordan, to read a book (no more than six, anyway. SIX IS THEIR LIMIT!)

Until of course, you realise that the whole thing is (as the best memes are), a clever, totally pointless hoax. Google “BBC top 100 books read 6” or some such, and see what you find. Not much in the way of ‘official British Broadcasting Corporation’ business. More like, some people like this guy, shining some light on the shadiness, and then others like this lady, having the gall to spell the greatest writer of all time’s name wrong. JAN AUSTIN! Sounds like a Bedazzler shop in Texas.

Cruel internet meme, thee tricked me so hard. And now it’s your turn to be tricked, dear readers. Just don’t get a better score than us.

+ + til next time, even books + +

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Dear Will,

Hi! How are you? Still got that face “like a bag full of genitals“? Enjoying the walking? Making everyone else in the world feel that they lack an adequate vocabulary? Excellent, old chap, good to hear.

Now, firstly, let us say that we are big fans. Huge in fact. Between us we own pretty much every book you’ve ever written. And we totally read them! In fact, one of our first BFF bonding moments was a discussion about the dude that grows a vagina in the back of his knee in Cock and Bull. That was totally gross. And by gross we mean rad.

Also, when we were living in London in some shitty place right next to the largest housing estate on the planet, and we were all ‘Hey, London’s pretty grim, innit?’, reading How the Dead Live really helped. Which was odd, seeing as it depicted the suburb we lived in as a land full of dead people… But it totally sorted us out! Viewing our neighbours as corpses made the place feel much more manageable. So thanks for that.

Great Apes was hilarious, Dorian was, like, totally ambitious but you pulled it off (no pun intended), and your phrase ‘conga line of butt-fucking’ was thrown around our group of friends like a happy baby for a good few months, bringing a smile to the face of whoever held it.

So yes, we like you. You’re clever and you make the funnies with the words. But here’s the thing: your latest book SUCKS ASS. Please explain.

Forever yours (unless things keep getting worse),

Alice and Angela.

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+ + til next time, even books + +

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+ ANGELA: Clover, or ‘trefoil’, has a cosmopolitan distribution, is soft and spongey on the butt, and when gathered in this mystical circular fashion, is no doubt dusted with fairy juice, making one smarter, sexier, better at sitting upright. All excellent attributes for taking in the written word on a zingy, bright winter’s day.

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> ALICE: It is a truth universally acknowledged that nothing beats a spot of reading while flying, and while this particular swing is a little stingy in the height department, it fulfilled its function as a soaring device quite satisfactorily. Advanced players can amp it up a notch by going hands free.

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> ALICE: Are we in heaven, Angela?

+ ANGELA: I think so, Alice.

> ALICE: What about that blog post we’re supposed to write today?

+ ANGELA: …

> ALICE: …

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+ ANGELA: Once I read that heavy metal dudes have such long, lush hair because all the head-banging gets the blood a-circulating, stimulating growth (case in point). Here, my head didn’t bang but it dangled, and what with all the blood gushing downwards, I’m sure it had the same effect. Afterwards, my mental capacity was addled yet slightly yogic, my tresses 1/10000th of a mm longer and my feet shrunken like they’d been Chinese-bound for 1/10000th of a second. All in all, a very interesting way to read a book … if you were a BAT.

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+ ANGELA: This is probably illegal…

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> ALICE: This is not, but it’s highly dangerous nonetheless. If you share my penchant for reading on expensive cars, you’ll need to learn how to wear a crochet blanket. In many cases this will bewilder the car owner long enough for you to make a quick getaway.

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This is Steve. Steve is so cool that if you went to his party and started out real sweet, then tumbled through a million levels of looseness until it was 7 am and you’d shagged his sister and pooed in his bed, he’d be like, “Morning dude, have some pancakes”. Thus, if Steve says reading while cycling is cool, it’s cool.

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+ ANGELA: How much do we look like a two-headed, quadrupedal creature here? Which is funny, cos Alice and I always did say that if we were to combine my upstairs with her downstairs we’d be the perfect petite éclair. This way we get the best of both worlds (but more of a petit fours). Oh, and, reading butt-to-butt in bookshop couches is the business.

> ALICE: Word. (sorry)

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These guys agree with us. Validation!

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Anal reads, dicktion, text shows, stripreads, ewrotica, softcockvers, hardbound & gagged … porn shops are perfect for all the biblioviles out there.

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+ ANGELA: Last but not least, the BED. If the BOOK was to have a Twin of Destiny, the BED would be it. It is the squishy, cloud pile to the rigid, square-cornered paper brick. While the bed is the crib for dreams, coaxing, rocking to-and-fro like a mama, the book is the dream-prodder, doing the cast-call for scary characters, surreal landscapes and loopy mind lullabies. I once got asked, “If you had to do ONE THING for six hours a day, EVERY DAY, what would it be?” Well, you’re looking at it. BED + BOOK = AWESOME. I’m sure that makes my psychological profile closely resemble that of a dole bludger, but I care not. Back to bed.

+ + til next time, even books + +